Page 17 of The King's Queen

“Ah. Rowan is an interesting case, we will say. He’s got motives for his motives, that’s for sure, but he’s a good kid at heart, I think. He won’t come to the palace just to murder you in cold blood if that’s what you’re worried about. That would be too inconvenient for him.”

“Oh. How comforting.”

Rowan. The name is familiar. It takes a minute before I remember where I’ve seen it before. Rowan was the prince in a book Tanja read for me as a child. He came and saved the kingdom from ruin and married ‘goodness and truth’ rather than a woman. Whatever the hell that means. But it was my favorite story. Whenever Tanja finished, I would take its worn cover between my hands and trace every ridge and stitch with my tiny fingers. I’d smell the pages and hold it for a minute; imagine a world where I could live a life like that.

Goodness and truth were just about as far away from the boy from last night as they could get. That murderous expression on his face as he brought his knee into my captor’s jaw pops into my mind. I shiver.

“Are you cold?” Finneas asks, already removing his own woolen cloak to drape atop my own.

“No, no, just thinking.”

“About that fiancé you’re running away from?”

“Sure,” I lie.

“You could just have another man or lover challenge him to a duel for your hand. That’s how I married Aiko,” he says it so nonchalantly I almost miss it.

“Wh-what?” I sputter, staring up at him. At those fine lines crinkling in the corner of his eyes, his soft mouth and sun kissed freckles. He looks nearly identical to a teddy bear Blaine gave me one birthday.

“Well, it’s a long story…” he trails off, scratching at the back of his neck.

I smile. “We have time.”

He looks at me and stumbles, his face reading pure surprise before he offers a lazy smile, seemingly having forgotten whatever he had seen in me that had caused such a shock.

“We met at her Ball of Deun when she came of age,” he began explaining, and I nodded along expectantly. I remember my own ball when I turned 16, a blessed lady’s entrance into society. Suitors generally come pouring in afterwards.

“She was the most radiant woman I had ever seen. She wore a flowing lilac gown, embroidered with golden thread and millions of tiny diamonds. She looked like dawn herself, that one hour before the sun rises when they sky is purple and the stars still glimmer? That was her. She was short in stature, that clearly hasn’t changed, but she held the room’s attention like no one I’d ever seen before. She was a force to be reckoned with. Every eligible bachelor in the room sought her hand for a dance, and one by one, she rejected them. She contented herself by standing by the band and swirling to the music by herself. I was immediately in love with her.” He sighs dreamily, his eyes glazed with the fond memory.

“And then what happened?” I lean forward, feeling once more like a child listening to Tanja read to me.

“I went to try my luck when the music slowed, but someone beat me there. She rejected him like all the others, like she probably would’ve done with me, but instead of leaving, he reached out to grab her by the wrist and demanded she dance with him.” He growls. “Well, I saw red, and next thing I knew, I had broken his entitled little nose. He was on the floor, screaming and bloody, but I didn’t care. I turned around, expecting her to thank me or be awed. But she had walked away! I sulked by the refreshments the rest of the night until the bartender came over and slipped me a note. I was requested by the lake behind the manor.

“I was drunk at this point, and it probably wasn’t my best idea to go alone in a strange building as the son of a duke, but I went anyway. And there she was, splendid in the moonlight. I swear, she was glowing, her eyes, that dress, her very skin. All of it. And we continued to meet like that, in secret. She didn’t want the world to know we were courting yet, and it wasn’t until it was announced in the paper that she was engaged that I knew why.”

Something stirred deep in my chest. This story is too familiar, as I walk the lines of it even now.

“Well, I went to her in a fit, how could she use me like that and such nonsense. That’s when she begged me to run away, said it was the man whose nose I had broken all those years ago. That he had bought her out from her family. I would’ve left for her, but that’s when a maid caught us and told her father. Our meetings stopped, she was never there anymore, and I could only imagine in torment what was going on behind those closed doors. The wedding date encroached closer and closer, so I did the only thing I could think of. I challenged him to a duel to the death for her hand.”

“You can do that?” I inquire. My mind starts racing with possibilities, if Blaine knew that there was a way out of my marriage, why hadn’t he done anything? But then again, why would he, and why am I still holding onto what he’s clearly already let go of.

The large man chuckles. “Medieval, isn’t it? But yes, it’s ancient Krycolian tradition that any man of noble birth equal to or greater than in power to the bride can challenge her fiancé to a duel to the death. Whoever is left gets to marry her. And I won. We married a month later, then moved here. We’ve been here ever since.”

The golden green glow of the forest lulls us into an easy silence now, the weight of his declaration settling heavily on my chest. Then I think of Aiko, wondering what she would’ve looked like that night. I can picture it as clearly as if woven into one of those exquisite tapestries I study, her dancing with her hair unbound encapsulated by glowing moonlight. A goddess born in human flesh.

“Do you ever regret it? Killing him, I mean?”

Finneas stops to think about it, rubbing that stubbly ghost of a mustache above his lip pensively before he shakes his head.

“For her, I would do it a million times over again,” he says before he holds his hand out to stop us both. I pause and listen, only to hear nothing.

“What is it?”

“Guards nearby. I can’t get you in closer, you know the rotations better than I do probably. Anything past this point, I’ll be a hinderance.” He motions forward to the path before us. “Keep straight on this path, and you’ll reach the southern wall.”

I nod, hearing the clatter of armor and hooves faintly in the distance now and know he’s right. It’s only a few moments past dawn. The darkness provides just enough cover for me to slip back through the wall undetected, but not with the larger man attached to my hip.

“How will I find Rowan again?” I stop after a few steps, and he stops to think about it for a minute before a large grin splits across his face.

---